Posted on Oct 30, 2018
The Army’s noncommissioned officer corps is due for a culture change, according to this senior...
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COL Mikel J. Burroughs SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL LTC Stephen F.SGT David A. 'Cowboy' GrothCPT Jack DurishPO1 William "Chip" Nagel]TSgt Joe C.SP5 Mark KuzinskiMaj Marty HoganSSgt (Join to see) LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see)Cynthia Croft SPC Margaret Higgins 1SG Carl McAndrewsSGT (Join to see)CPL Dave HooverSGT (Join to see)Lt Col Charlie Brown
The Army’s noncommissioned officer corps is due for a culture change, according to this senior...
Posted from armytimes.com
NCOs
Training
Leadership
Leadership Development
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 13
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The culture change we need is the one that everyone is afraid to talk about. Every poor E8 or E9 was a poor E7. Some of them were poor E6s and maybe even bad at E5.
Any substandard senior NCO we have seen in our careers got there because of NCOERs that were better than they deserved. We have too many raters and senior raters that don't want to take the time to counsel and develop NCOs effectively, or be the "bad guy" who writes something like "continue to develop before considering for promotion". This is something that will take a generation to implement component-wide and see results.
It's not something that a new physical fitness test with dead lifts can fix. It's something that starts with making LDP an impact event every month, teaching every leader how to think and write, not how to copy/paste. How to write effective and accurate evaluations and awards, how to write effective counselings, how to mentor, coach and develop, and how to recognize when a Soldier has risen to their highest level of effective performance and not advance them past that, instead of wasting LDP time teaching what happens to an award once it reaches BN S1, or how to read your Record Brief.
Any substandard senior NCO we have seen in our careers got there because of NCOERs that were better than they deserved. We have too many raters and senior raters that don't want to take the time to counsel and develop NCOs effectively, or be the "bad guy" who writes something like "continue to develop before considering for promotion". This is something that will take a generation to implement component-wide and see results.
It's not something that a new physical fitness test with dead lifts can fix. It's something that starts with making LDP an impact event every month, teaching every leader how to think and write, not how to copy/paste. How to write effective and accurate evaluations and awards, how to write effective counselings, how to mentor, coach and develop, and how to recognize when a Soldier has risen to their highest level of effective performance and not advance them past that, instead of wasting LDP time teaching what happens to an award once it reaches BN S1, or how to read your Record Brief.
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MSG (Join to see)
This is one of the areas I was wanting to start talking about when I made my initial response. You just put the words in a better format than what I could have. I have no qualms being that "bad guy" when it comes to writing NCOERs. One of my Soldiers that I Senior Rate, one of my comments was "Serves at expected levels and on occasion performs better than peers...." I also rated him Qualified. He wanted to sit down and have a discussion about seeing if I would be willing to change his rating from Qualified to Highly Qualified. And we did talk, but I am sticking to my rating and comments. If I change them up, then I will have compromised my integrity and would do him and the Army a disservice. I certainly feel he has great potential with more mentorship down the road, but he is consistently inconsistent.
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SGM (Join to see)
Just saying what most people are thinking anyway.
NCOERs should never be a surprise. If you are doing it right, the rated NCO should be reading exactly what he has been hearing all year and reading in counseling/support forms. Granted, one rarely deals with their senior rater on a regular basis like a rater, but that rater deals with that senior rater on a regular basis and bridges that gap.
I have never had an NCO ask for a block change on an NCOER, but I have had a few ask that a quantitative bullet be changed to a similar good quantitative bullet about a different event that he felt would paint a better overall picture.
NCOERs should never be a surprise. If you are doing it right, the rated NCO should be reading exactly what he has been hearing all year and reading in counseling/support forms. Granted, one rarely deals with their senior rater on a regular basis like a rater, but that rater deals with that senior rater on a regular basis and bridges that gap.
I have never had an NCO ask for a block change on an NCOER, but I have had a few ask that a quantitative bullet be changed to a similar good quantitative bullet about a different event that he felt would paint a better overall picture.
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